Five years ago I quit my government job.
It wasn’t an easy decision, but in so many ways the choice felt completely right.
One of those ways wasn’t the way my mind felt.
That first year of not going to work each morning my mind continually pestered me with questions such as, ‘What is wrong with you that you can’t work a nine to five like everyone else?’ My mind continually harassed me wanting to know why I was so flawed that I couldn’t even do the conventional go to work, get paid, spend money lifestyle that everyone else around me seemed to be doing.
However, over time, as my spirit started to feel stronger from following my own daily rhythm, I found that when my mind started to criticize my choice to leave my job I was able to start asking my mind questions back such as, “Does the conventional lifestyle work for anyone? Are people really happy and healthy in this go to work every day lifestyle? Is the planet as a whole happy and healthy with this get a job and get paid at any expense way of living?”
My mind couldn’t lie to me.
It answered no.
And the daily mental criticisms over my choice to quit my job went silent, and this is when I knew for sure that the conventional North American lifestyle was not one I was ever going to emulate.
The unwinding of being obsessed with being productive has been a gradual untangling for me. Little by little I wean myself off pushing too hard, creating an over-busy schedule and being addicted to feeling overwhelmed.
I start to see that these ways of being don’t have to be a normal part of being alive for me, and truthfully for anyone else, as well.
Instead we can make a different choice.
We can choose self-care.
Self-care is starting to become a way a life for me, and what I am seeing is that self-care isn’t something we can talk about, read about or watch videos about and expect to experience any improvement in our lives.
Self-care is something we need to do. A way we need to live.
This is why I couldn’t have been happier yesterday evening when a student in my Mindfulness Meditation class walked out of the yoga studio mid-class.
She was tired.
While meditating this student realized that what her body needed was to go to sleep.
So she went home to do just that.
And not only did she help herself by choosing rest over the socially acceptable choice of staying in a class she signed up for, she helped others too, by being a self-care role model.
This student knew very well that we were all watching her, and she left the class anyways. She admitted to herself, and to all of us that she was tired, and then she left to go take care of her need.
I couldn’t have been prouder.
Sometimes it can be hard to accept that people are watching us, that our actions have an impact on the future decisions the people we meet each day are going to make.
But they do.
Each of us lives surrounded in community, and the choices we make have a deep impact on the choices other people around us make.
Unfortunately, for most people (me included) our self-esteems are intricately intertwined with a sense of needing to be productive, wanting to get stuff done and feeling it is imperative to our identity to show the world what we are made of.
This usually plays out with each of us trying to do more by pushing ourselves harder, even if this means becoming exhausted and overwhelmed.
We can often think that admitting to others that we need to take time to care for ourselves makes us look selfish, lazy or needy. However, I would like to suggest that demonstrating to others how we care for ourselves in loving ways is actually an act of generosity.
When we leave work early because we need extra rest, we show our colleagues that they too can make their own health a priority, and when we demonstrate to our kids that we are going for a needed walk to unwind, we role model the upkeep of a healthy mind and body.
Our choices have impact beyond our own lives, and showing up for ourselves in healthy ways is one of the best ways we can improve the global community.
In my experience increasing my own self-care has helped my compassion grow and my ability to love increase.
From a place of feeling rested and calm, I find myself more able to show up for others in a relaxed, restored and trusting manner. What could be less lazy or selfish then that?